3. Sports and the press.

Beck, Daniel ; Bosshart, Louis

The press is the oldest medium regularly informing people about sports. From the beginning, sports teams showed keen interest in print media coverage: Newspapers formed the principal means of bringing news of coming events and results of past events. News of coming events built audiences for sporting contests and, together with the results of past events, helped to sell newspapers (Lever & Wheeler, 1993, p. 130). Lamprecht and Stamm distinguish three categories of print media dealing with sports:

* sports pages in daily newspapers

* sports papers and magazines (with general topics or specialized in certain kinds of sports)

* periodicals published by sport clubs and associations (Lamprecht & Stamm, 2002, pp. 148-149)

Sports pages in daily newspapers

The first newspapers were published in the beginning of the 17th century and about 150 years later the first sports-related articles appeared. In the middle of the 18th century sports became a topic in newspapers of the United States: In 1733 the Boston Gazette described a local boxing match between the athletes John Faulcomer and Bob Russel. Such reports about sporting events originally formed a part of the newspapers' local section. The first newspaper with a special sports section was the Morning Herald in England (1817), followed by other English and American papers: The Globe (England, 1818), The American Farmer (USA, 1819), and Bell's Life (England, 1824, published on Sundays). The Times, the conservative London paper, introduced its sports section in 1829. All these sports sections contained local news, as telegraph transmission was not yet available.

With the rising popularity of sports such as baseball in the U.S. or soccer and cycling in Europe after 1870, the sports sections became more important. At that time, telegraph transmission made it possible to report sports news instantaneously from outside the local area, thus allowing for the first time in history collective involvement in distant sporting events. The telegraph was not only used by print media journalists, but also by sports fans themselves--bettors went to pool rooms and saloons equipped with receiving sets (Lever & Wheeler, 1993, p. 127). At the same time, very fast rotary press techniques came along with lower production costs and therefore lower consumer prices. Newspapers and magazines became a good for everybody.

A lot of the newspaper readers were now interested in popular sports. The New York World became the first newspaper with a special sports newsroom in 1883. In the 1920s 40% of the local news of the New York World and 60% of the local news of the New York Tribune consisted of sports news. At that time the early way of sports reporting--describing an event chronologically--had already been replaced by the modern style of journalism, placing the most important information at the beginning of the article (Garrison & Sabljak, 1993, p. 23).

After the introduction of electronic media, especially television, the function of the sports pages changed. Other media were able to report the results and the course of a match or a race much faster than the newspapers. Nevertheless, the sports pages did not become useless. Live reporting on radio and television increased the general interest in sports, but due to a lack of time TV and radio reporters could not give enough background information. So it became the newspaper journalists' task to provide this kind of news: analyses, comments, reports from beside the field, track, or arena floor. The most important question for them was no longer who won, but why he or she or the team did. Sports journalism in newspapers became more demanding and achieved a higher level of professionalism than before.

For a long time, the popular press wanted to show sports "from the inside," being close to the events and to the athletes. Quality papers also adopted this style to a certain extent (in Europe since the 1960s). Nowadays sports fans can find sports sections made for different target groups, but sports reporting in newspapers has generally become more personalized and more event-oriented. Along with these changes the size of the sports section in daily newspapers increased (Wernecken, 2000, pp. 54-55). Sports reporting in newspapers seems to be quite successful today: Whereas television remains the leading medium for sports, the daily sports sections are also very popular, especially among younger readers.

Sports papers and magazines

One of the first publications dealing exclusively with sports appeared in 18th century England: the Racing Calendar edited by the English Jockey Club. Founded in 1751, this club for upper-class people regularly informed its members about sporting rules and forthcoming horse races through its publications.

The first sports magazines were also released in England: Sporting Magazine, founded in 1792; and Sporting Life, in 1821. Both magazines mainly covered horse races--as betting on horses became very popular at that time, people needed information and hints to place their bets. An American pioneer of sports writing was William T. Porter who founded The Spirit of the Times at the beginning of the 1830s. The first French sports magazine was probably Le Sport (1854); the first magazine in the German language was--apart from various club magazines being founded in the middle of 19th century--the Austrian Allgemeine Sportzeitung (1878). In the USA, the number of sports magazines multiplied from nine by mid-century to almost 50 during the 1890s (Lever & Wheeler, 1993, p. 126).

Nowadays there are even newspapers and magazines that specialize in one sport only. The first specialized weeklies were the following ones:

* American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine (especially horse races), 1829;

* Spirit of the Times (especially fishing, horse races, cricket, rowing, and sailing), 1831.

No doubt, those magazines appealed to upper class gentlemen!

* National Police Gazette, 1845;

* New York Clipper, 1853

These two magazines dealt with more popular sports like baseball and boxing (Riess, 1995, pp. 29-31). In the Police Gazette, the best selling sports magazine in the USA, crime, sex, and sport were already interwoven, and it seems likely that its success led daily newspapers to appreciate the sales potential from coverage of sports (Betts, 1953).

Other well known specialized magazines and their founding dates are

* Sports Illustrated, USA, 1954;

* Le Velocipede, France, 1868;

* Le Velo, France, 1891;

* L'Auto, France, 1900, today: L'Equipe;

* In Italy, La Tripletta and Il Ciclista became Gazetta dello Sport in 1896;

* Kicker (specialized in soccer), Germany, 1920 (Boyle & Haynes, 2000, pp. 27-28)

Daily sports papers dealing with all kind of sports are very popular in countries where they don't have to compete with widespread popular papers, since popular papers normally feature a very extensive sports section. L'Equipe in France, Gazetta dello Sport and Corriere dello Sport in Italy, Marca in Spain--these publications belong to the best selling newspapers in their countries. In other countries daily sports reporting in print media is limited to the sports sections of daily newspapers, which have massively extended their sports coverage and their sports sections in the past decades. In addition, the market for sports magazines tends to favor those specialized in certain kinds of sports or in certain aspects of sports (fitness, portraits of athletes, illustrated features). These publications are very popular.

Periodicals published by sport clubs and associations

Thousands of club magazines exist, though many of them are only read by a few dozens of readers. These periodical publications have several functions: They ensure the flow of information among club members, and they fill a gap in the offerings of the "big" sports media by reporting events or topics which are not covered by other media. Sometimes club magazines deal with similar topics as sports books, providing background information about historical, technical, medical, or other aspects of sports. Some magazines published by larger associations are professionally made and sold to a larger audience, so they look quite like other non-club-related

sports magazines.

What makes sports so popular for newspapers? The language of the topic is simple and understandable. Victory and defeat create tension and emotions in an otherwise bored society. Sports create idols and objects of public voyeurism. Sports create coins of exchange, i.e., content for public discussions (Lamprecht & Stamm, 2002, pp. 140-145). The fact that print media are not live-media becomes an advantage. There is enough time and space for background information, interpretation, and comment. Besides this, reporting for newspapers costs less than obtaining permissions for live-transmissions on television or radio. The huge variety of newspapers and magazines creates many niches for many different levels, from the local to the global. There are, of course, differences between the penny-press and local, regional, or nationally subscribed newspapers. The news values seem to be the same ones: identification, dynamism, negativism (success vs. defeat, damage, cheating), and complexity.

References

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Daniel Beck and Louis Bosshart

University of Fribourg--Freiburg (Switzerland)

email: daniel.beck@unifr.ch; louis.bosshart@unifr.ch